INDIANAPOLIS — A recent rash of mediocrity has made Matt Kenseth slightly insecure about his Chase for the championship chances.

And he's second in the standings.

"I don't think we're really locked into the Chase," he said.

Kenseth has been entrenched in NASCAR's top 10 all season, holding strong in second place the last nine weeks.

With only six races left to assure a spot in the playoff field, he can either play it safe and ease his way in or run hard and risk blowing it all. For Kenseth, the strategy is a no-brainer.

"Everybody races every week to win — that's what it's all about," he said Friday. "Every time I look at it, you get the most points for leading the most laps and winning. So that's what you try to do each week."

He'll stick to that plan in Sunday's race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a track that has been fairly good to Kenseth over the years. Although he's never won here, Kenseth has three top-five finishes and was second in 2003 — the same year he won his only NASCAR championship.

If this is the year Kenseth finally gets to kiss the bricks, he and his Roush Racing team will have to turn it up a notch.

Although he's been decent most of the year — with two victories and 11 top-10 finishes — Kenseth has been in a minislump of late with just one top-10 in the past six races.

"I'm happy when we're consistently in the top five. I'm not happy when we're consistently 14th like we were the last couple of weeks," he said. "We have had a few weeks where we've been off and made some mistakes, and got taken out of a race, and just didn't really run that good at Pocono."

He currently trails leader Jimmie Johnson by 97 points.

But he knows that could change with a slip of the steering wheel or a broken car part, and points to Dale Earnhardt's recent free-fall as evidence that no one is safe. Earnhardt plummeted from third to 11th in the standings with consecutive last-place finishes.

"You've seen what happened to Junior a couple of weeks ago and how fast things can change, so I need to make sure we keep doing our job and try to operate at a championship level and hopefully gain some points on (Johnson)," he said.